Catch Up

Robin Hood:

Ridley Scott delivers another ambitious miss, but that doesn't mean this is a terrible film. Scott proves he can still direct and give believable performances, even though I wasn't a fan of casting Crowe as Robin Hood. There are some good actions scenes thrown in, but there are too many dull scenes. There are also some inaccuracies with the Robin Hood story as well, I don't recall King Richard dying before Robin Hood is considered an outlaw. As far as prequels go, this did an ok job.

Overall Grade: C

The Human Centipede:

Your liking to this movie will depend of how sick your sense of humor can be. To me, this is one of those movies where when you talk about it to your friends, basically pitching this would be funny. But it doesn't come off very funny when put on the screen. I admire Tom Six with coming up with an outlandish idea and sticking with it. If you think the idea of a "human centipede" is disgusting and unfunny, then this film is not for you, others lie myself would think it's not that good. While this film works as being what I call a fucked up movie, there are still some flaws. I admire that Six didn't attempt to being too gross, but still being gross. The acting and pacing is awfully dull. Many of the actors aren't very good, and the dialogue is pretty poor. There are moments of sick brilliance, and moments that go a little too far. I also enjoyed the campy performance from Dieter Laser. I read that Six is planning to make a sequel, and he promises that this film will be tame compared to the sequel. I thought this film was disgusting enough, but I'm probably watch the sequel out of curiosity.

Overall Grade: C+

Catch Up

Yeah, It's been awhile

Death At A Funeral

If you've seen the original, there is nothing new brought to this. It's the same movie done by different actors. Some of it still worked, the performances from Columbus Short, Marsden, Glover, and Luke Wilson did well. If you haven't seen the original but want to see the new one, go ahead.

Overall Grade: C

Oceans

Beautifully shot, but the narration of Bronson is rather dull, and it ends with a message we've seen too many times before

Overall Grade: C

The Losers

Somewhat enjoyable, but there are too many scenes that were stupid and most of the comedy didn't work. If you want to watch a big stupid PG-13 action movie, you'll enjoy this. This film has a shitty villian though, he seemed bored. Columbus Short was good in this, everyone else was ok. The final ending moment was stupid.

Overall Grade: C

Nightmare On Elm Street

What an unnessesary remake, well-done lighting mixed with shitty performances. Jackie Earle Haley's Kruger was rather boring, all the humor of the original is gone. Don't waste your time.

Overall Grade: D-

I Love You Phillip Morris

Ewen McGregor is on a roll this year, and this is one of Jim Carrey's best comedies. The sexual content may be uncomfortable for some (makes Brokeback Mountain seem tame), but if you can sit through it, you'll find yourself laughing through the entertaining black comedy. Also one of my favorites this year.

Overall Grade: A-

Iron Man 2

I'm pretty dissapointed with this one, it was too heavy on plot and pretty light on action. The film was uneven, and it reminded me of Spider Man 3 at times. The performances are all good, and Faverau seems to improve as a director. I think they were cramming too much just to set up the Avengers movie.

Overall Grade: C

Film Review: Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass is the latest highly anticipated adaptation of a popular comic book, while the ending is different and leans toward the typical happy ending. Kick-Ass is still Kick-Ass.

Aaron Johnson plays Kick-Ass, a once average teen who was sick of getting picked on and all the bad people in the city. He decides that he wants to be a superhero and fight crime, the problem is; he doesn't have any superpowers. After becoming a Youtube phenomenon, Kick-Ass gets dug deeper into the gritty and violent crime underworld. He meets Big Daddy and Hit Girl (Nicolas Cage and Chloe Moretz), who are out to get mob boss Frank D'Amico (played excellently by Mark Strong). Big Daddy and Hit Girl offer Kick-Ass to team up with them to stop D'Amico.

I'll be honest, I haven't enjoyed a film this year, like I enjoyed Kick-Ass. It's gleefull with the graphic violent, it's profane, and often funny. It's obvious that the cast had a good time being involved with this. If you have enjoy tons of bloody violence and a sense of humor, you will enjoy this. If not, you might want to watch something that clearly isn't badass like this. The title clearly speaks for itself.

Overall Grade: A-

3-D Catch Up

I caught two 3-D flicks recently, heres some quick thoughts.

Clash Of The Titans

If you "have" to see this movie, watch it in 2-D because the 3-D was uglier to look at than my asshole. Anywho, the movie, well, it wasn't good. I don't get what's the big deal with this Sam Worthington (Terminator: Salvation sucked, Avatar was extremely overrated, and now this). I'll admit, he's not a terrible actor or anything, but when the fuck did this guy come in to big in huge blockbusters already? About the movie, there was too many plot holes when it came to the inconsistent references to Greek mythology. Its brief reference to the robot owl made me cringe in my seat. The CGI was bland, and it wastes it's talents. Neeson and Fiennes seemed wasted in their role. The scene with Kraken was boring, go watch the campy original instead.

Overall Grade: D

How To Train Your Dragon

It seems like Dreamworks is starting to take advice from Pixar in the storytelling department, since this is one is better than some of the recent Pixar flicks when it came to in-depth characters. The story formula is nothing new, but it was still a tad convincing. The 3-D is actually well-done (up par with Avatar in that department). The comedy was simply "meh", mostly jokes I've seen in every other kids movie. This movie could have been better if it didn't try to be funny.

Overall Grade: C+

Catch Up

So I saw a shitload of flicks recently, here's a breakdown:

The Ghost Writer:

This is already one of the best films to come out this year. Everything about it is very well done. While it doesn't rank up to Chinatown, Repulsion, or Rosemary's Baby, it still ranks to The Pianist. Even though Polanski is going through some shit now, he can still make a damn good movie.

Overall Grade: A-

The Runaways:

I was somewhat surprised by this one, while it's not a in-depth look of the history of the band, it sure got the music down. Kristen Stewart does a pretty good job as Joan Jett, Dakota Fanning on the other hand, was not good. She got on my nerves, she also can't sing like Currie either. The highlight belongs to Michael Shannon, he shined everytime he was on screen. Overall, not a bad as I expected, but still not very good either.

Overall Grade: C+

Hot Tub Time Machine:

This is basically the spring's answer to The Hangover. Both movies are indeed funny. Rob Corddry is simply comedy gold anytime he was on screen. The rest of the cast was good too, especially the running gag with Crispin Glover. Would I call it the funniest movie of all time, no, but is it worth checking out, certainly.

Overall Grade: B

Survival Of The Dead:

This is the 6th entry of the Dead series. You'd think that Romero would run out of steam, while he is starting to reach that territory, there is still good moments in the last couple Dead flick. This is one is tied along with Diary Of The Dead. The story isn't anything groundbreaking, but there is still some good deaths for zombie lovers like myself.

Overall Grade: B-

Defendor:

Woody Harrelson has been on a roll recently, and this is keeping the wheel rolling. Harrelson is perfect for this role and does a great job with it. The film perfectly blends comedy and drama quite well. While I think the ending has it's flaws, this one is definetly worth your time.

Overall Grade: B+

Alice In Wonderland:

Want further proof that Tim Burton is overrated, this film will validate my argument. While this is technically a sequel, it doesn't have the feel of the original animated movie. Burton doesn't do a good job with the material, the 3-D was pointless, it seemed like they wanted to throw in the 3-D at the last minute in order to compete with Avatar. Depp got on my nerves in this one, he changes his voice every 5 minutes, this movie reminded me of Speed Racer due to the fact that it seems like they want to throw in some visual tricks to distract us from the pedestrian story. Do yourself a favor, and avoid this one.

Overall Grade: F

Green Zone:

So basically this is just a 4th Bourne movie, except based on actual events and came too late. I can't stand Greengrass' documentary style directing, he over does in the Bourne movies and with this one too. The camera movements were giving me a headache. This movie is just Matt Damon trying to find WMD's, with Bourne directing. Once you get to the "twist", you feel completely unsatisfied cause the audience knew how it was gonna turn out.

Overall Grade: C-

Repo Men:

This movie had a somewhat interesting story, but I was only looking forward to see this for the violence. The film has a good start and good end, but a pretty lousy middle. There was a sub-plot involving Jude Law's family and it was completely uninteresting. Forest Whitaker delivers an enjoyable laughable performance, and he does some badass shit. This could have been a good movie if they tried to flesh out a better story.

Overall Grade: C+

A Prophet:

Very well done prison mobster flick. Very-directed, great performances, and quite gritty. Check this one out as soon as possible.

Overall Grade: A

Film Review: Leaves Of Grass

Leaves of Grass is quite an interesting film, one of the obvious reasons is because Edward Norton plays two people.

The film stars Edward Norton as a pair of twin brothers. One brother Bill is an Ivy League philosophy professor, while the other brother Brady is a Oklahoma pot dealer. After Brady is part of a drug scheme gone wrong, he decides to lure Bill to Oklahoma to take part of his scheme, the problem is that Brady had to fake his death in order to get Bill to come back to Oklahoma. Upon arrival, Bill is already confused many of the town people think he is Brady. Bill gets knocked out and wakes up to find that Brade is still alive.

After Brady explains why Bill is here, Bill isn't necessarily happy with his plans, but he uses this as an opportunity to reconnect with his family which he hasn't seen in years. One of them is finding a love interest (Keri Russell).

This film is pitch as a comedy-thriller. While some of the content would easily filed under black comedy, I wouldn't call it a thriller. As far as comedy goes, this movie is pretty funny. The cast is good, while Norton is great as usual, the highlight of the films has to go to Richard Dreyfuss as the king of the drug trade in Oklahoma.

My only complaint is that Tim Blake Nelson's directing is a little uneven. While it isn't a "good" comedy, there is plenty of parts that were quite interesting. Leaves of Grass is still worth your time.

Overall Grade: B

Film Review: Brooklyn's Finest

Brooklyn's Finest is the latest entry to the trend of gritty cop films, sadly, this one is a giant cop movie cliche. This was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who directed one of the good recent cop flicks Training Day. You can tell that Fuqua is trying hard to replicate Training Day in this one.

The film focus on 3 different cops. The first one being played by Don Cheadle, as a cop who's been working undercover for the last few years, because of this, his private life hasn't been the same. He is trying to get out of the undercover game.

The second cop played by Ethan Hawke, who is a family man with 2 more kids along the way. Hawke is trying to save money to move out of his moldy apartment to raise a family in an actual house. With his recent cases of trail and tribulation, he decides to start stealing money from gang drug busts in order to get the new house.

The third cop is played by Richard Gere, who has been on the force for 22 years and is about to retire in a week. No one on the force likes him, since he is a coward. He is also suicidal and loves a certain hooker.

The three stories interwine barely and the plot is nothing we've never seen before. The film is also more than two hours, I was checking the time alot. I can't really buy Cheadle acting like a thug, if I was a gangster, I would've easily been able to tell he is an undercover cop. Hawke seems like he is trying and Gere seems bored.

Another reason this film is getting some attention is because of the return of Wesley Snipes, his role is pretty small and his performance wasn't bad, didn't really stand out. I was hoping his performance would be similar to New Jack City, not even.

Overall, the actors seems to try to do work with such a cliche piece of shit. Don't waste your time.

Overall Grade: C-